Better days; or, A Millionaire of To-morrow

by Thomas Fitch; Anna M. Fitch

The freight of the Petrel consisted of two hundred shells of potentite, weighing one hundred pounds each, and the result to the Coronodo Islands of their falling upon it from a height of a mile or more, was predicted long in advance of the experiment. “If,” it was said, “fifty pounds of this explosive will destroy an ironclad, what will twenty thousand pounds of it do to an island of rock? What would a dozen Petrels accomplish, hurling two hundred and forty thousand pounds of it upon an army, a city, or an enemy’s fortress?”

They could level Gibraltar with the sea; they could extirpate an army of a million men; they could obliterate London or Berlin or New York from the face of the earth. A fleet of a hundred Petrels could ascend from New York, cross the Atlantic in three days, destroy every city in the United Kingdom in six hours, and, leaving England a mass of ruins, with two-thirds of her people slain, return in three days to New York, with unused power enough to go to San Francisco and back without descending.

England, or any other nation, could likewise destroy America, for neither aerial navigation nor the manufacture of potentite are secrets locked in any one man’s brain.

“If Mr. Morning’s dynamic exposition,” it was said, “shall fulfill its promise, he can, if he chooses, as the possessor of so complete an air ship and so powerful an explosive, be the ruler of the world. Emperors and Parliaments must, for the time, be the subjects of the man who can destroy cities and camps, and who can make such changes in the map of the world as he may choose.”

“If the experiment this day to be made at Coronado,” said the President of the United States, “shall be successful, armies may as well be disbanded, for there can be no more war, and governments all over the world must, henceforth, rest upon the consent of the governed.”

Before sending the Petrel upon her mission, an examination of the territory to be devastated was in order, and the Hotel del Coronado was nearly emptied of its guests, for the Charleston, the Warspite, and the Wilhelm II., steamed away to the Coronado Islands, where the American, British, German, French, Russian, Italian, Mexican, and Brazilian engineers, with their assistants, landed, took measurements and altitudes, and a number of photographic views, and examined the islands thoroughly, verifying the accuracy of the topographical maps and profile models in clay previously made by engineers employed by Morning. It was projected to make another survey and set of maps after the potentite had done its work, so as to preserve an accurate and unimpeachable record of the result of what our hero modestly called his “experiment.”

The vessels returned to their moorings about three o’clock in the afternoon of the first day of the exposition, in ample time for their passengers and officers to attend the dinner given by Morning that evening to his royal and imperial majesty Edward the Seventh, king of Great Britain and emperor of India. This sagacious prince, rightly conceiving that the dynamic exposition of citizen David Morning was likely to be the preliminary of an entire change in the methods of government, if not in the governments themselves, of the civilized world, determined to head in person the British delegation, which was brought on the Warspite from Vancouver to San Diego.

The manner in which King Edward has impressed the American people may be deduced from a remark made at the dinner by a shrewd observer and leading citizen of San Diego.

“That king,” said he, “is a dandy. He is credited with being the cleverest and most adroit politician in England, and I believe it, or he could never have steered his canoe out of that baccarat whirlpool. If Dave Morning’s dynamics should sort of blow him out of a job at home, let him come over here, and in one year I will back him at long odds to get the nomination for the best office in the county from either the Democratic or Republican convention, and, maybe, from both. What a roaring team he and Jack Dodge and Sam Davis would make for a county canvass! Jack to do the fiddling and dancing, Sam the all-around lying, and Edward the hand shaking and the setting ’em up for the boys!”

The ample gardens of San Diego, San Bernardino, Los Angeles, and Santa Barbara were stripped for the decoration of the banquet hall. All day flowers were arriving by the train load, and several hundred floral artists were at work in the great dining room. The effect was surpassingly beautiful. Suspended from the great dome by ropes of smilax was a gigantic figure of Peace, wrought in white calla lilies, bearing in her right hand a branch from an olive tree, while her left held to her lips a trumpet of yellow jasmine. On the walls the arms of all nations were wrought in camellias, carnations, fleur-de-lis, and roses of every hue. The music and the menu were both incomparable, and, in accordance with the later and better practice of great dinners, formal speech making was altogether dispensed with.